By Kit Bowen
Story
Under the guise of a modern-day
Cinderella tale, we meet high school senior Sam Montgomery (
Hilary Duff), a wallflower who is forced to wait hand and foot on her plastic surgery-obsessed stepmother Fiona (
Jennifer Coolidge) and whining stepsisters (
Madeline Zima, Andrea Avery), as well as work her fingers to the bone at the diner once owned by her deceased father by now run by the evil Fiona. Why does Sam do all this? Because Fiona--or more precisely, Fiona's money--is Sam's only way to get into Princeton, her dream college. The girl does find some solace in a cyber romance with an anonymous guy from her school, a person with whom Sam truly connects. When the fellow sets up a meeting at the Halloween dance, she goes, but once there, masked and in a beautiful white gown, Sam discovers her online soul mate is the popular high school quarterback Austin Ames (
Chad Michael Murray). Oh no! How could she possibly attract the likes of Austin Ames, whose girlfriend is head of the popular girl clique? Even though Austin doesn't find out Sam's true identity at the dance because she rushes off before he can take her mask off (yeah, that's right; a mask stops him from recognizing her), he is obsessed on finding out who his mysterious Cinderella is. Can Sam tell him who she really is? Will he love her just the same? And will she get to Princeton? Oh, who cares? I'm getting bored just writing this.
Acting
Duff certainly has a strong following. Now, more than ever, with her burgeoning music career on the rise, the young actress/singer can command the attention of most 'tweeners and is a very likable screen teen, even if she may be a little breathy and squeaky when delivering poignant monologues. Yet, the fact her rival
Lindsay Lohan (oh come on, we know there's a feud going on there) has already scored a major coup with the much better
Mean Girls,
Duff's appeal is dampened a bit, especially when the
Lizzie McGuire star tries to emulate the same material. Thankfully,
Cinderella Story has a truly worthy leading man in
Murray, the cutie from
Freaky Friday (which starred
Lohan, natch), infusing Austin with more soulful and romantic notions than the average high school hunk. He'll definitely make the girls in the audiences swoon, right along with
Duff. In the supporting bits, veteran comic actress
Coolidge, best known for her hilarious turns in
Best in Show and
Legally Blonde, is adequate doing the evil stepmother thing but is much better as the neurotic, liposuction-lovin', botox-injectin' freak.
Regina King, however, who was so good in
Jerry Maguire, is just plain wasted as Sam's "fairy godmother," a no-nonsense waitress who tells the girl to go out live her dreams. Please.
Direction
Cinderella Story not only suffers from bad timing but also retread problems. Are there really that many variations of the classic fairy tale worth seeing? Unfortunately, in this case, no. Director
Mark Rosman, whose guided
Duff in a few
Lizzie McGuire episodes for the Disney Channel, does what he can with his young cast, crafting a terminally hip Cinderella story--but ultimately all the good intentions in the film fall flat. It just becomes so been-there, done-that--from the mean popular girl getting her comeuppances to the geeky best friend/sidekick (played with relish, we might add, by Dan Byrd) getting the recognition he's always wanted to, of course, the sappy happily ever after. Gag. Without an original idea, hackneyed script and stereotypical performances, this means the burden of the film's success, which faces formidable summertime fare, rests almost completely on young
Duff's shoulders, just as the disastrous
New York Minute (oh wait, we forgot to add that mess of a teen movie to the list) did on the Olsen twins. It's time to give these poor girls--and this tired teen milieu--a break, ya think?